My Struggle With Self-Esteem

My self-esteem affects everything about me and everything I do (for better or for worse). I see myself as a loser nerd and everyone will treat me that way; I think I’m the life and soul of every party and everyone acts like its true, everywhere I go I bring FUN; I see myself as a success and things work out for me; I perceive myself as being in charge and have no difficulty abusing and bullying others; I think I’m inferior so I accept abuse like it is somehow normal. Weight battles, school, career, financial survival and prosperity, the ability to take risks – the list is long and involves every part of life.

Does this suggest that the way to make it big in life is to dream up a hyper-positive image of myself and watch the world flock to admire me?  The answer is, “Yes and no!”  We usually cheat ourselves out of things we can achieve because we don’t really believe we can do them. Instead of aiming for significant achievements we settle for less-than-best because deep down that’s what we think we deserve. On the other hand, everyone hates a conceited braggart and can’t wait to help him fail. Our self-esteem needs to be accurately based – not unrealistically high and not destructively low. There is no magic spell for this.

Image by jima via Flickr

[ Here’s a blog that offers good advice for building self-esteem:

http://www.everydayhealth.com/depression/treating/tips/battle-low-self-esteem.aspx ]

Our site is about bringing faith into the equation so what better place to start than looking at the best example we have – God.  In Exodus 3 Moses is discovering his life-changing mission and in the process he asks God who he (God) is. The answer is interesting, “I am who I am.” Moses had to go and convince the people to follow him and, when they wanted to know on whose orders, he was to tell them that “I am who I am” had sent him. Sound weird?  It did to Moses so he immediately protested that he was not the person God thought he was – there was some mistake. He had let his failure from years ago put him on the sideline; his self-image told him he couldn’t do anything. God disagreed.

I am who I am!

 So I’m not ashamed to be me.

I’m not what you wish I was, nor what you want to make me,

I don’t have to play games to win your approval.

I’m not afraid of being myself.

Your choice is to take me as I am or leave me be and I’m okay with that.

I don’t wish I was more or greater or better or anything else – I am who I am.

You can rely on me to be consistent and to act with integrity

 but if I am not what you expected or what you hoped for,

 the problem is all yours – deal with it!

We are not God (are you surprised to hear that?) and we do have areas in our lives that need transformation but we don’t need to live in anguish about that. Transformation is a normal part of the life of faith – we improve when we let the transformation happen.  We may go through hard times but that makes us “normal,” its nothing to feel inferior about and when the process is complete we’ll be far better than ever before.

Where’s the shame in that?

Now if God revealed this self-assessment, wouldn’t we expect the people who try to live by what he shows them to realize that this is the key to their self-esteem. It’s not about arrogance or self-deception. It is about seeing ourselves for who we are and being comfortable with that. This is hard to do when we live in a world of comparison and advertiser-induced-discontent. We compare ourselves with air-brushed models and our self-esteem collapses. We look at our super-heroes and movie stars and know that we will never be great like them. How little we know!

Faith is all about finding the authoritative source and basing our lives on what it reveals.

Got a problem with a warped self-esteem?  Start unraveling the mess and getting to grips with a healthy picture by meditating on the pivotal question, “Who do I say that I am?” We’re looking for facts and for reality. We need the insight of faith. We can ask for these things to be revealed to us so why not give it a shot?

“Who do I say that I am?”